Text edited by Frank DiGiacomo.

This song, along with A Farewell, and Peace, was written for and dedicated to Ms. Patti Thompson using texts of her own choosing. The poems chosen and the extraordinary abilities of Ms. Thompson as an artist provided the composer with several ideas he later put to use in his dramatic oratorio The Trojan Women, in which the role of Helen of Troy was written expressly for her.

The live performance of Song on a Poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson is by Patti Thompson, accompanied by Frank DiGiacomo, at the recital An Evening of Song by Frank DiGiacomo, Friday May 18, 1979 at the Carrier Theater of the Mulroy Civic Center, in Syracuse, New York.

LYRICS
Break, break, break,
on thy cold gray stones, O Sea,
O Sea, O, O Sea, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
the thoughts that arise in me.
O well for the fisherman’s boy,
that he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,
that he sings on his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on
to their haven under the hill;
but O for the touch of a vanished hand,
and the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break,
at the foot of thy crags, O Sea,
O Sea, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
will never, will never come back to me.
Oooh -

Poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, selected by Ruth Greiner Rausen, published by Thomas Y. Crowell, New York.
© 1964 by Ruth Greiner Rausen.